Rain Depolarization Measurements on Low Margin Ku-Band Satellite Signal at a Tropical Location

The phenomenon of depolarization of a Ku-band satellite signal caused by rain has been studied with a simple experimental system in which the attenuation of the copolar component and the enhancement of the cross-polar component signal have been measured at a tropical location. The degradation of cross-polarization discrimination (XPD) due to rain over the Earth space path has been obtained from these measurements and compared to that estimated from the ITU-R model, indicating the characteristic feature of a tropical location.